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Kevin Scarbinsky | kscarbinsky@al.com

About Me:

I'm a sports columnist for the Alabama Media Group, and you're right. I'm not from around here, not originally. I was born and raised in Pennsylvania, but I've spent most of my adult life in Alabama. No better place to do what I do.

A little inside baseball: This originally was a blog item I wrote and posted Sunday. Because we also serve readers of the newspaper as well as the website, we sometimes turn blog items into Hot Corners for the paper. The Hot Corners are automatically posted on the website. So al.com readers may get a feeling of deja vu. Hope that helps. Kevin

Simple, shades40. I was listening to Paul Dee's teleconference after the penalties were announced. Someone asked him about the death penalty, and he indicated that the Infractions Committee didn't consider it because it's only available in cases involving repeat violators. At that point, I had read the NCAA's press release but not its full public report. I based that quick blog post on Dee's answer. When we saw the full report, we realized that it states that USC was a repeat violator. So we killed the incorrect post. I apologize for any problems caused by the mistake.

Thanks for asking, eissal. Check out this column I wrote a year ago about Alabama's decision to build a statue right away for Nick Saban. http://blog.al.com/kevin-scarbinsky/2010/02/scarbinsky_saban_statue_is_too.html

Perhaps you skipped this part of the column; "It's important to note at this juncture that Saban was talking about his team during that discourse, not any other school in this state that may be struggling with youth and inexperience on defense. He faced it last year."

It's because I do have a problem with the process that I refrain from voting in any poll, ozona. Like Groucho Marx, who didn't want to be a member of any club that would have someone like him as a member, I think college football's national champion should be decided by coaches and players, not by someone like me.